


Wash it all clean

by Beleriandings



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Introspection, flashbacks to his childhood, set during the beach episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-02 01:04:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17878130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: Prompt: Caleb + "submersion in cool water".





	Wash it all clean

The ocean, Caleb thought as he stared up into the endless blue sky, was absolutely nothing like he had expected.

When he was a child – that little boy called Bren, who was a different person than he was today - his father came back from his military posting near the border with stories; he had never actually seen the ocean himself, but he had served with those that had. All of the tales they told, Leofric had passed on to his son, wide-eyed and hungry for stories of far-off places. They swore that they had seen monsters in the roiling waters, storms that made waves that were tall as mountains, lightning splitting the endless sky, ships dashed to splinters across the rocks. 

Bren had listened with eyes saucer-wide, as Frumpkin had purred in his lap, until he fell asleep to the sound mingled with his father’s low voice, head slumped against his arm.

When Bren had grown a little older, the most wonderful thing had happened; a travelling bookseller had come to town, a little old gnome woman riding a fluffy yak with paniers stuffed with ancient, mildewed books. Bren had scraped together all the copper pieces he had saved from doing chores around the village: from helping the Heiders milk their cows at sunrise every morning since their daughter went away to serve in the army, from delivering parcels of bread from the baker to old Mathilde while she was sick in bed, from sweeping his cousins’ yard and scrubbing floors until his fingers were raw.

He had taken his little hoard of coppery treasure and spent it all on two books: the first, an ancient and damp-wrinkled book of cantrips for children, missing several pages and scrawled with graffiti from its previous owners.

The second book contained no magic – at least not of that sort – but it was almost as great a treasure; a book of tales from far away, journeys across the seas. It was in Common, which he could only partly speak then, and written in tiny print in archaic prose too. But Bren forced his way through it, both to improve his language skills and also because after the first chapter he was utterly enthralled by the tales of pirates, of murder and betrayal and love on the high seas.

He read it to his parents proudly, translating it painfully slowing into Zemnian while reading out loud. He read it to his friends too. Naturally, a few days later, all the children of Blumenthal were playing pirates on the banks of the lake, running and splashing in the shallows with swords made of sticks and planks of wood. He remembered that day so clearly, even now: Eodwulf had accidentally pushed Bren off the dock and Bren had gone down yelling, emerging in a spray of bubbles as he play-acted a dramatic death in the shallows, sending the small bright fish that swam there scattering. When he had come up, Eodwulf had been standing there looking terrified that he had hurt his friend, until Bren had popped his head above water again, making eye contact with Astrid who was sneaking up behind him from under the dock, water dripping from her hair and a mischevious grin on her face.

The two of them had jumped him and dragged Eodwulf into the water with them, and the three of them had chased each other, throwing clumps of waterweed until the other children joined in. Sides were picked, and all-out pirate war ensued, until eventually Herr Baumann had come out of the house with his lazy, gentle old shepherd dog half-heartedly following behind, to chase them all off his land.

Still, they had run off cackling with laughter to dry their hair and clothes in the afternoon sunshine, their eyes bright as the imaginary treasure at the bottom of the lake.  

Bren had come home with the worst sunburn of his life that evening, and his mother had tutted as she rubbed herbal salve into the stinging patches on his arms and face and the back of his neck. But she also smiled and ruffled his still-slightly-damp hair as he had recounted to her his adventures on the high seas.

Later, at the Academy or in the library at his Master’s manor house, Bren had pored over detailed maps of the world. The continents of Tal’dorei, Marquet, and Issylra were separated from Wildemount by expanses of ocean marked in beautiful swirling patterns of waves, but at the edges of the map were monsters of the deep, lovingly rendered with bulging eyes and lashing tails and teeth like razors, ready to tear apart any ship that should venture there. He had shivered once again, wondering if he would ever see the ocean: surely, once he were a great, powerful mage like Master Ikithon, he’d be able to travel wherever he wanted. His work for the Empire might even require him to do so. In those daydreams, Astrid and Eodwulf were always at his side, simply because the possibility of a future where the three were separated never really occurred to him then.

A lot of things didn’t occur to him then, Caleb thought in the present, as he gazed up into the deep blue. But for once, the thought and all it led to didn’t hurt quite so much as it usually did: somehow, in this moment of floating, his body suspended on the exact dividing plane between the sky and the sea, it felt like he was detached from the world and the cares of the shore. Here, it seemed, they simply _weren’t_ , for a while at least.

It wasn’t something Caleb was used to, feeling this unburdened; he wasn’t even sure if he enjoyed it. He frowned up at the blue. Except for a few seagulls that occasionally flew across his field of view, there was nothing to break the endless expanse above him. The water was cool, but not cold, gently lapping in waves that supported and cradled his body. Even the sounds of his friends playing on the shore behind him were all but gone, his ears flooded under the water and all sound dulled to a low roar. He could feel the ever-present weight of the amulet around his neck, resting on his chest, but by now it was so familiar that was barely aware of it anyway, warmed to the temperature of his skin as he drifted in the salty water.

He had expected sea monsters. He had expected pirates. Above all, he had expected to grow more and more agitated as they traveled further from the Empire; he was willing to help Fjord, he was glad beyond words that Jester was able to see her mother again. But at the same time, he was prepared for the clock to start ticking louder and louder in his head, the more time they spent here: _too long. Every moment wasted is a moment not spent on fixing things_. He was expecting the monsters inside his own head to start to grow restless, pulling him back to the Empire to do what he must, or die trying. As he probably deserved but nevertheless feared, like the coward he was.

Speaking of which… he was expecting to be afraid. There had been so much fear, so much darkness, these last few weeks. Shadycreek Run and all that had happened there had burned its way into him, just another wound in his heart scorched shut to keep the blood from pouring out, just so that he could keep on trudging forward long enough to do what must be done. He was practically built of fear, his body scarred over with it, held together and driven forward by it for so long that he had almost forgotten what it was like to feel anything else.  

So, the last thing Caleb had expected was to feel so _calm_.

It was almost a relief, then, when Fjord came bursting into existence right beside him in a spray of salt water. Caleb yelled in alarm nonetheless, but he couldn’t help but smile, very slightly.

_It was okay_ , he thought, as the shadows began to lengthen and they left the beach for the shore. He hung back a little, watching Nott gnawing triumphantly on the neck of a dead seagull and spitting out a mouthful of feathers, and Caduceus shaking an improbable amount of sand out of his straw hat. The sense of calm hadn’t even gone away quite yet, which was…odd. Unfamiliar.

It was selfish, he thought as they left the beach. But perhaps it was something he could get used to, now and again.


End file.
